Mother Earth Is Responsible for Shutting Down North Korea’s Nuclear Test Site

According to Jonathan Swan, Trump has convinced himself that he is the only person on the planet capable of overcoming “the seemingly intractable disaster on the Korean Peninsula.” So it stands to reason that, when North Korea announced that it was shutting down a nuclear test site and would no longer be testing nuclear weapons, the president would pat himself on the back and take all the credit.

A large part of North Korea’s underground nuclear test facility, which leader Kim Jong Un pledged to close, is unusable anyway due to the collapse of a cavity inside the mountain after the last blast there, Chinese scientists say.

Seismologists involved in a soon-to-be-published study also warned that another blast in the same spot and with similar yield could cause “environmental catastrophe.”…

Soon after the sixth and largest blast last September, satellite images suggested that one part of the site, a 7,200 foot granite peak called Mount Mantap had diminished in height. Some U.S. and South Korean experts suggested that tunnels inside the mountain—where five of North Korea’s six nuclear tests took place—had collapsed, rendering much of the site useless.

Now, the two Chinese studies give credence to that theory.

In other words, Mother Earth is actually responsible for shutting down the nuclear test site, not Donald Trump—or even Kim Jong-un. The North Korean dictator simply thought he could use a major malfunction to pretend like he was making a change voluntarily, and our president fell for it hook, line and sinker because it fed his narcissistic ego. One might be tempted to laugh at these two idiots if the fate of the globe didn’t hang in the balance.

Support Nonprofit Journalism

If you enjoyed this article, consider making a donation to help us produce more like it. The Washington Monthly was founded in 1969 to tell the stories of how government really works—and how to make it work better. Fifty years later, the need for incisive analysis and new, progressive policy ideas is clearer than ever. As a nonprofit, we rely on support from readers like you.